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How can drones that take hours to arrive be a threat?
by mhb 3y ago
How can drones that take hours to arrive be a threat?
- plmpsu 3y agoIn contrast to ballistic missiles, you don't know where drones are heading.
- xenospn 3y agoGPS has been jammed in Israel for a while, not sure they can hit anything meaningful
- ThinkBeat 3y agoAll the different services then? Or just the American one?
- xenospn 3y agoWhatever enemy drones use, I’m guessing
- rany_ 3y agoIsn't that scarier? They'll need to bomb everything and anything to damage their target. They can't be precise/surgical about it.
- cwillu 3y agoThe warheads available to the craft in the first wave are basically large hand grenades. It's bad, I'm not suggesting otherwise, but it's not exactly carpet bombing either.
- azlev 3y agoVery unlikely that Iran uses GPS.
- gizmo686 3y agoGPS isn't the only way to navigate. Given how small Israel is, inertial navigation is probably good enough to cover the last leg of the trip. Even without that, they could still rely on cameras and old fashion navigation.
- kadoban 3y agoWhy can't they be? If you can't stop it, it's just a delayed threat.
- jl6 3y agoCould be small, hard to track, coming in unknown numbers and unknown times. Maybe most get shot down but some get through.
- ysofunny 3y agoone way, which is probably not what you're looking for and which I'm sure won't be a popular answer but I'll say it anyways in a false flag operation drones which take hours to arrive can be a threat
- cwillu 3y agoAs well as what other commenters have already said, faster elements are likely to be launched later to arrive at the same time.
- topspin 3y agoIt's about 1000 km from the western border of Iran to Tel Aviv. A Shahed 136 cruises around 185 km/h. Roughly 5.5 hours. Now, we can't know yet exactly what sort of drones Iran is using here, or exactly from where they we launched, so there are large error bars. But that's where "hours" comes from.
- mhb 3y agoRight. I'm just saying it's plenty of time for a fighter jet to see and intercept a drone.
- cwillu 3y agoHow many drones though? There's already reports of a second wave, and if they're all timed to cross into israeli airspace at the same time… This may also be cover for an attack from a different direction.
- OhNoNotAgain_99 3y ago[dead]
- topspin 3y agoThat's not an good tactic for a number of reasons. The attack involved a lot of drones. Hundreds. Dealing with hundreds of drones with manned fighter aircraft is dubious and possibly a terrible mistake: committing and exposing high value assets for what is, militarily, scutwork. Fighters don't carry enough gun ammo for the purpose, because ammo is heavy and the guns fire it very rapidly: typically there is only a few seconds of gun ammo capacity in a fighter. Air to air missiles are too precious to use on these targets: they're needed to defend against high value threats and can't be wasted on these crummy, militarized model aircraft from Iran. Also, these drones fly at relatively low altitude, so defending fighters must operate at low altitude and low speed over foreign territory, which is problematic for many reasons. Finally, the drones aren't easy to find because they aren't great radar targets, being small, low altitude, and mostly made of lightweight composites: it is unlikely they can all be detected and engaged quickly enough. For all of these reasons and others, manned aircraft are poor counter for this sort of attack. Despite this fighter aircraft were used. It was reported that the US, the RAF and the IAF all used manned aircraft to bring down some of these drones. But as you know, many still reached Israel. There, cost effective ground defense did most of the work.
- ein0p 3y agoThey fly low and not in a straight line. Low radar and IR visibility too. IOW you have to be directly in its path to have a chance to shoot it down and because of muted IR signature (no jet), your MANPADS will most likely fly right past it even if you are near. But most of these are probably just decoys. The main strike will be timed to arrive when Israeli AD is depleted by them.
- belter 3y agoThe drones are to overwhelm the defense, news just reported cruise missiles have been launched also. This time the Ayatollahs have pushed it too far as the most logical retaliation will be to go back directly at the leadership....
- cwillu 3y ago“Iran’s defense minister has issued a statement warning neighboring countries that any of them that open their airspace to Israel in order to intercept the drones will be targeted” Indeed, they do seem to be painting a target on their heads.
- deleted 3y ago[deleted]